


The Holy Roman Empire Roots For You

by ztannas



Category: The 39 Clues - Various Authors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arthur Is Alive, Confused Amy, Flashbacks, Gen, Ian Finally Gets a Clue, Isabel Is Alive, Isabel Ruins Everything As Usual
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 14:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6613870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ztannas/pseuds/ztannas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a mission to find out the location of Vikram Kabra, Ian and Amy discover some difficult truths about their respective parents and are forced to evaluate their working relationship. Meanwhile, Isabel escapes from her underground prison and fucks shit up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Holy Roman Empire Roots For You

**Author's Note:**

> This is my unfinished novel for nanowrimo that I am now determined to finish. I credit Mak with this idea in full. This is canon compliant until Day of Doom, basically. You’ll find out what happened in this universe in future chapters, don’t worry.

He knew she didn’t notice it, but seeing the detail came naturally to him (he was a trained reader of situations and people, after all). The photos were incriminating to say the least: the slight tilt of the woman’s head, the angle of the man’s foot—small hints of something bigger that he wasn’t sure he needed to tell her quite yet. Ian Kabra was no fool. He was skilled in composure, talented in diffusing a social bomb with a single sentence and a curve of his R’s. The shock of the details in the photo had hit him hard, absolutely, but he wouldn’t show it (maybe in the minute aspects of his body language—his white knuckles around the Polaroid, the twitch in his left eyelid, a furtive pallor tinting his ears).

His partner in the assignment, however, would react in a much different manner—one he wasn’t sure needed to be introduced in a room with a family member who already wanted to assassinate her.

Amy Cahill was no weak-kneed damsel, for sure, but she was fragile when it came to her parents. Finding out that her father had been an agent for the same organization that employed Ian’s mother to kill for knowledge had taken a toll on her a few years back. It was a massive relief when she found out her father only went through initiation and didn’t become a member (or, so they’d been told).

If Ian was honest with himself, he’d say Arthur Trent simply made the classic mistake of falling for his target’s charming ineptitude—a feat that Ian himself had been victim of—and left his life of crime to someone more suited. He regretted never asking the man about it when they met covertly during the Vesper debacle. An event that he had kept a secret for years, before breaking and telling Amy on a particularly morose Christmas the previous year. She, in turn, had never, to his knowledge, told anyone else—not even her brother. She was angry at first (he remembered ducking a half-hearted fist) but was emotionally emaciated by the whole story once he was able to get the accusations to stop.

Evidence that her mother (her role model, her hero, the legendary Hope Cahill) had been romantically or, at least—Ian shuddered to even think the word— _sexually_ entangled with his father, Vikram Kabra, would rattle Amy too much to even correctly use a doorknob.

Yes, Ian would wait it out while the two of them carried out the mission. There was always the chance he was wrong. No need to be hasty, of course.

(Though, Ian was rarely wrong).

Amy watched as Ian shoved papers into his pocket. He’d been acting suspicious the entire ride from the airport into the desert. There wasn’t much to stare at, just piles of sand, but he spent most of the ride with his face permanently glued to the glass. He was hiding something, but she decided not to press him. He would tell her if she needed to know, he always did—even though it sometimes took a few years.

Last Christmas, while she sat on the kitchen floor surrounded by broken glass and bits of turkey that saladin was already chewing on, he’d approached her to talk about her father. She thought it strange at first—Arthur was dead and she’d just ruined Christmas dinner—but as Ian continued to talk everything suddenly clicked. All of the cryptic text messages she’d seen on his phone before he’d yanked it away, the untagged presents under the Christmas tree, the way Ian would stiffen whenever Dan mentioned Arthur in any context. It was clear Ian thought the information would cheer her up, but all she could think about was how long he’d kept the secret from her. She had yelled at him, still sitting in the rest of the turkey dressing (she might’ve even thrown some at him, she couldn’t remember), and he’d waited patiently until she calmed down.

Despite his tendency to be impatient about receiving information and getting things done (and ordering food from take-out places), Ian always seemed to be more patient with Amy. She didn’t know whether it was a conscious effort or just the way he softened around her in general. She watched as he managed to tear his gaze away from the bleak desert outside the car to the vibrating cell phone on the seat beside him. He barely read the message before turning it off completely and putting it in his jacket pocket.

Ian never ignored messages. Something was definitely up.

 

She was just as he’d left her last—wrinkles forming around her lips from lack of a proper skin care regimen, uncombed dark hair in lakes upon her shoulders. Her eyes, the only thing different this time, looked as if someone had shined them with a silk handkerchief. His mother knew he was up to something, her gaze held a gleam for only Amy, and he had a sudden urge to make sure her handcuffs were securely fastened.

To her credit, Amy seemed to ignore this (or perhaps she hadn’t noted the curious animosity pouring from Isabel’s eyes) and took a seat across from her old enemy. Ian sat as well, his eyes flashing from his mother to Amy, ready to intervene if the incarcerated began to get… _impolite_. Even in an awful jumpsuit Isabel managed to drip with a regalty that Ian and his sister, Natalie, had always sought to emulate, but had failed time again. Isabel was the queen, at least she believed so, and it would stay true as long as she believed it. She commanded the grey room like a CEO of a fortune five hundred company—it was difficult not to fall under her spell.

Ian narrowly avoided physically shaking himself free of the hold she, unfortunately, still held, and proposed the question he and his companion had come to ask.

“Where is my father?”

Isabel smiled, a deceptively sweet turn of the lips—a smile Ian and Amy both knew very well. It usually came accompanied with a bargain ( _"well, what are you going to do for me?"_ ), and most likely one that would not come easily.

“So, this is all business,” She sighed, a good imitation of a disappointed mother, “I did wonder why you’d brought a date to your visitation.”

Five years ago, Amy might have blushed at this comment—instead it was Ian’s cheeks that held a scarlet glow. Isabel’s casual remark had been for him, her charming son with a weakness in the form of genuine human fondness. It was something Isabel would never have for herself and she never missed an opportunity to exploit it in her children. He hoped she would leave Natalie at peace during this visit. He certainly wasn’t in the mood to hear about “what a waste of talent” her death had been, as if the only thing that mattered about Natalie was how skilled she was with a gun.

Amy crossed her legs, left over right ( _“always towards the most interesting person in the room,”_ ), and he noted her foot barely two inches from his trouser leg. She had taken to other hints of their closeness recently, especially around third parties. He had wondered if she did it without knowledge—brushing of the hand, straightening of a lapel, dusting of a coat—perhaps these were simply things she felt an inclination to do. She was an older sister, the head of a family, and usually one of few females who frequented headquarters. She was used to comforting wayward Cahills and playing the maternal figure, though he knew she still felt like a child in the eyes of their family. If she needed it—god forbid, Isabel became nasty—he would reach for hand in a heartbeat, and he knew she would do the same for him if _he_ needed it. The two of them had gained a tight bond through the years as they each took their places as heads of their respective branches of the family. They had watched loved ones die, stolen and lied for the sake of the Cahill name, and, occasionally, for the sake of their own lives, only to fall back on each other.

Amy did not need a friendly gesture to continue their mission, however, as she leaned forward to regard Isabel with a ferocity in her green eyes that Ian hadn’t seen since, well, Amy’s last encounter with his mother.

“What do you want, Isabel?” Amy steeled herself, a slight correction in her posture that Ian was sure Isabel had taken note of (she always had to have the upper hand, his mother—even if she didn’t actually have anything at all), “we’re prepared to negotiate.”

Ian watched as his mother’s eyes filled with a fire that he knew couldn’t be extinguished, only spread, and he was filled with the dread of what she’d say next.

Isabel smiled at Amy and the two women locked eyes across the metal table, the older woman’s pleasantry evaporating as she weighed her options. Her next words were directed at Ian, but her eyes never left Amy’s.

“I’d like to speak to the lovely Miss Cahill alone, please.”

Ian gulped.


End file.
